Hallelujah! You can get MacGyver on DVD from Amazon. Series 1, 2 & 3 are out, and series 4 comes out this month.

Gaming nights usually consist of Settlers of Catan and maybe Munchkin. I indulged in a couple of Christmas presents for myself and got Pirate's Cove and Puerto Rico.

One of my favourite games of all time is a very DOS game written in 1983. It is essentially a murder mystery. Similar to Cluedo, you have to figure out which of the 7 guests did the deed, which room was the scene of the murder, and what implement was used in the crime.

I saw this on Top Gear last week: a Bugatti Veyron. It blows all the other supercars out of the water. It is the fastest, most powerful street legal car on the market, and it can leave a formula 1 car in its dust.

No, not that kind of booty. Sheesh, you people are dirty-minded.

I seem to have finally gotten Rock Me Amadeus out of my mind now, but its been replaced with another song: The Downeaster "Alexa" by Billy Joel.

Here is a picture of Billy Joel with his own downeaster "Alexa". The boat is named after his daughter.

"If"

A while back, I procrastinated watching HBO's Deadwood. If you haven't seen it yet, you should - it is fantastic.

Don't be forgettin' to talk like a pirate today, lubbers!

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to see Cinderella on Ice. It's my sister's fault - she decided she wanted to see more shows this year, and since her husband isn't keen, I get to go with her.

In line with my sister's desire to see more shows, we went to see Romeo & Juliet last week. We are generally of the opinion that ballet is a bunch of crap and would be a particularly hideous way to spend an evening. However, neither of us have been to a ballet before, so we figured we should at least see one so that when we explain how crap it actually is, we are actually speaking from experience rather than pulling it out of our arses.

I'm sure most of you are less sad than me and have seen the Apollo 13 movie. And if not, then maybe you're enough of a science geek to know the details anyway. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really need to explain what Apollo 13 is and what happened to it, do I? I just need to explain why I'm writing about its towing bill. Ok, maybe I will explain the full story anyway. Basically, Apollo 13 was supposed to be the 3rd manned lunar mission, departing on April 11, 1970. 2 days out there was an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks which damaged the Service Module. The Command Module batteries would only last a few hours and they were needed during reentry, so that part of the ship was shut down. The crew got into the Lunar Module (the bit that would normally land on the moon) and used it as more or less a lifeboat while they used the moon as a slingshot to head back to Earth. The Lunar Module was designed to support two people for two days, but instead had to support three people for four days. They had some issues with lack of water and excessive heat and so on, but managed to safely get back to Earth where they splashed down in the Pacific and were picked up by USS Iwo Jima on April 17th.

I loved Monkey Island. I’m not really sure why since I pretty much sucked at them and had to frequently resort to hints sites or walkthroughs to get through difficult bits. I haven’t the patience to try all the permutations of different objects together to achieve some effect. But I did like seeing how the puzzle was solved, even if not by me. I’ve got all the games, and I do go back and play them every year or two. I find I’ve forgotten half of it by then and it’s like playing a fresh game again. I’ve always thought it was a shame they didn’t make another game. Well, now they have!

Lately, I’ve been addicted to watching MacGyver. I was initially reluctant to watch it again. MacGyver is one of my idols from childhood and I was worried that if I watched him again now, I’d discover that he’s actually pretty lame. Well, I didn’t need to worry. MacGyver still rocks.

Stephen recently forced me to watch the first episode of Game of Thrones, based on the series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. At first, I wasn’t convinced. It’s a medieval fantasy series with quite graphic sex and violence, and I’m generally a fan of things more reality-based. While Stephen was away I watched a few more episodes and started to get hooked on the characters. I started googling to find out more about the backstory of the characters and then decided I should probably just read the books.

My grandmother is extremely talented – she can knit, sew, crochet, embroider, cross-stitch and create very beautiful and useful things. My mother also can do most of that too. But these sorts of skills don’t seem to be as common in my generation. I can knit a little, but nothing fancy, just a scarf or something equally simple. I used to sew a little back in high school, but again, just simple things like book bags and a pair of shorts. I can cross stitch, but frankly, that’s probably about the easiest craft to master – the stitches are simple and all you need is the patience and focus to follow the pattern correctly, neatly and consistently. I recently decided it was time to add a new skill to my repertoire – crochet!

At the end of my last post, I mentioned that my first task was to find a source of wool/yarn here in Hyderabad. That took a couple of weeks. We trekked to several different bazaars in search of wool, with mixed success. We found a couple of places that had small amounts of very thin wool, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. We decided to keep looking, but in the meantime we bought some heavy nylon cord to make a new laundry basket. I’ll post about that later, but here’s a sneak preview of the early stages:

My crochet skills have now progressed beyond coasters and dishcloths. Here are some of the crochet projects I finished last year:

When I'm working on something that doesn't require 100% focus, I like to have a bit of distraction in the background. Without it, I find that my mind tends to wander and then I switch over to another task and end up wasting time. My favourite background distraction is watching cooking shows like MasterChef, Great British Bake Off and Top Chef.